Cellular telephony has been designed to permit a wireless device to send date and or voice messages over a wireless communications network providing the device is able to transmit its device identification codes appropriate to the network on which it is attempting to transmit. Wireless communications is a global and rapidly expanding technology. The advent of wireless cellular telephony for digital information applications such as pagers, e-mail and internet, point of sale terminals, and the like, to say nothing of the wireless telephone voice systems applications is compounding this resource depletion problem. Several alternative systems and networks are common, including analogue and digital voice systems, data only systems, cellemerty, short data burst packetizaton, microburst technologies and the like.
Current technology uses identifier codes for each wireless device in the form of an Electronic Serial Number (ESN) and a Mobile Identification Number (MIN) It is standard practice to assign one and only one wireless network system calling number, such as a cellular telephone number (TN), to one and only one mobile device having a unique ESN/MIN combination of identification codes. Several patents, such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,765,107 issued to Korowajesuk, U.S. Pat. No. 5,905,949 issued to Hawkes et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,870,672 issued to Stoddard et al, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,097,939 issued to Jacobs, have attempted to develop systems to detect the use of more than one mobile device using the same ESN/MIN such that fraudulent use can be traced. This misuse involves having more that one device with the same MIN/ESN pair ID such that the original device assigned the ID gets charged the costs for any use of the network regardless of which actual device uses it. Fraud can be involved if any of the non-original devices are used without authorization by the owner of the original device.
Every time a wireless network communications device is powered, that is the transceiver is powered on, the device transmits its unique code, such as the ESN/MIN pair, to the wireless network communications system with which the device is designed to function. As long as the device is powered the device also send the code at fixed or random, but repeated, intervals to the wireless system with which it is designed to function. Additionally, every time the device attempts to send a message or communication to the network system, the device also transmits its unique ESN and/or MIN codes to Fat system during the initialization of that communication. The system checks the codes to verify that the device is allowed to use the system, and, if verified, allows the device to conduct the communications utilizing the system.
It is the global expansion that is using up the precious resources of radio frequency bandwidth and phone number assignment. However, if multiple devices use the same ESN/MIN pair for the same phone number, it may appear as if someone is attempting to fraudulently utilize the device, Thus there is a need for a system and method that allows multiple devices to share common identifiers without falsely creating a fraud alert.